17 April, 2006

The second block I finished is one of the pattern that must have been inspired by the Series-A set of the nursery rhyme pre-printed blocks of the Victoria Quilt Block Company. But as the littel detail stitches e.g. on his buttom and his back are not part of the original pre-printed pattern I assume that Jayne's and Barb grandmother did not use the pre-printed pattern itself...

According to Deborah Harding's book the nursery rhyme pattern originally are from the pre-stamped blocks series-A and series-D sold by the "Victoria Quilt Block Company". However, while retracing the pattern I found too many little differences between the blocks and the "original", therefore I doubt Jayne's and Barb's grandmother used the pre-stamped fabric blocks. Maybe she traced them from a cataloque or another quilt...

This is the beautiful vintage Redwork Quilt Jayne was referring to. Made by Jayne's and Barb's grandmother for her little son, their father. I fell in love with its simple beauty and was bold enough to ask Jayne if I could recreate the quilt. Now, over several weeks Jayne fotographed every single blook for me and sent me the sets via email.

I tried and tested several ways to get as accurate copies of the blocks as possible and in the end I printed every one of her fotograph, traced them onto a clear overhead films and scanned that linedrawing back to a jpg file. All those jpgs I could then resize on my computer to get more or less same sized print-outs. The print-out I "simply" retraced with my iron-on pencil. That way I created iron-on transfers which I "stamped" onto my fabric.

It is as much work as it sounds but I am enjoying every single moment of it. The more I work with the pattern the more I find out about the "best" techniques to trace. Besides, I am not working solely on this quilt - I love to work on several projects at the same time that way I don't get overwelmed... And then, with preparing the pattern I had to choose the embroidery floss and white fabric I wanted to make this quilt with.

The fabric is from my stash of vintage white cotton. It is heavier than the regular "Kona" cotton but not as rough as it apears in this close-up shot. It is very nice to work with as it feels like it is "starched".

As for the shade of red I decided to go with the Anchor # 1005. ( Second from above). It is a darker shade of red than my favourite Anchor # 47 (First one from above) I think it looks more vintage...well at least to me.